Five years ago this week, the world was upended. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, in the wake of 118,000 cases in 114 countries and more than 4,200 deaths.
That night, cable news reported that actor Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, had been diagnosed with the virus. The National Basketball Association announced it would suspend its 2019–20 season after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the virus.
Two days later, the Trump administration punctuated the string of startling news by declaring a national emergency. It also issued a travel ban on non-U.S. citizens traveling from 26 European countries. At the time, just 1,645 Americans were known to be infected with the virus.
The nation effectively went into lockdown, with school, business and even routine happy hours becoming largely limited to Zoom. The supply chain buckled. Emergency rooms struggled to treat the high volume of desperately ill Americans.
Air, train and bus traffic plummeted. Roads emptied out. Masks and hand sanitizer became necessities.
Congress passed six bills aimed at offsetting the economic damage wrought by the virus in quick order, beginning March 6: $7.8 billion, $15.4 billion, $2.1 trillion, $483 billion, $900 billion and $1.9 trillion.
In the years since those terrifying weeks in March 2020, roughly 7.1 million worldwide have died of COVID-19, according to the WHO, including 1.2 million in the United States.
Here’s a look back at the pandemic that reshaped America.
From left: Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator; Anthony Fauci, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director; and Vice President Mike Pence appear at a briefing on March 4, 2020. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ad in the Metro Center station in Washington on March 14, 2020, advises commuters and tourists on hygiene and mentally coping with the coronavirus pandemic. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)Visitors wearing face masks view the cherry blossoms as they walk along the Tidal Basin on the morning of March 20, 2020. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)Empty shelves at a Harris Teeter grocery store in Washington are pictured on March 19, 2020. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)Seats in a waiting area in Washington’s Union Station are wrapped in plastic and sealed off with police tape on March 27, 2020. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)A COVID-19 testing site in the FedEx Field parking lot, operated by the Maryland National Guard, is seen on March 31, 2020. (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call)A man wears a face mask during the lockdown while waiting for a takeout order at Kelly’s Irish Times on Capitol Hill on March 24, 2020. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)An Architect of the Capitol worker places social distancing markers on the floor near the Senate subway on May 4, 2020. (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call)A man dressed as the Easter Bunny waves to families as he drives around a Capitol Hill neighborhood on April 12, 2020. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)A movie is shown at the Family Drive-In Theatre in Virginia on Friday, May 1, 2020. (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call)Ohio Republican Rep. Warren Davidson removes his face mask while walking down the House steps after a vote on May 15, 2020. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)An election official’s station is cleaned at McKinley Technology High School during primary voting in Washington on May 26, 2020. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)Airline passengers are seen in the concorse of McCarran International Airport, now Harry Reid International Airport, in Las Vegas on June 30, 2020. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)A University of Virginia student is pictured in her dorm room on the Charlottesville campus on Sept. 8, 2020. (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call)Demonstrators protest the Trump administration’s pandemic response in front of the White House on Oct. 8, 2020. (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call)Then-Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett arrives for the second day of her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Oct. 13, 2020. (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call)Fast forward to September 21, 2021: Over 640,000 flags are placed on the National Mall to commemorate the number of Americans who died during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)
